"Girl, can the rice-horse be made stronger?"
"Yes! Use hardwood as the frame, add two crossbeams, and use mortise and tenon joints."
Zhao Dashu didn't know what mortise and tenon joints were. "Go back and talk to the carpenter in detail. We have to make it as soon as possible."
"OK!"
The village chief urged the two to go home quickly, as being a rice seedling was their top priority.
The room where Carpenter Zhang worked was filled with the scent of pine wood, and planed wood was piled all over the floor. "Carpenter, this is not good enough. We have to make a new one. It's not strong enough."
The carpenter saw that the rice-stalking horse he had made before was broken into two pieces. "Is the master not hurt? The wood I used is very hard, how could it be so fragile?"
He began to doubt his craft.
Zhao Xiaoyu went back to her room and got some paper and pen to start drawing a new pattern. The mortise and tenon structure looked a bit like a swallow's tail. "Have you seen the kind that has one convex and one concave, and snaps into place with a click? If we make it like this, will it be much more solid?"
The servant understood what his master meant. He knew the style, but he didn't know it could be made on a rice-growing horse.
"Miss, let me try, it should be fine."
Zhao Xiaoyu seemed to remember saying that this structure was ten times more solid than nailing.
Oh my, dad is so awesome. He bought a servant who has great carpentry skills and is very smart. He understands everything you say to him. Their family is so lucky!
The village chief came back from the fields and went to their house. He squatted at the carpenter's door and smoked his pipe, the light from the pipe flickering.
"Village chief, are you going to be a door god?"
But maybe he was squatting in the wrong place? This is his home, his home!
"I'm waiting for Yangma, Dashu, you should know what this thing, Ruzhun Nengshen, means, right? I'm afraid you're going to have great luck."
"village head!"
The village chief stood up and patted his shoulder. "I will go to the county town in a few days and try to see the county magistrate. You can come with me. You should know that it is not only our county town that plants rice every year. If we can promote rice seedlings and trees in the prefecture and even the whole country, you will have accumulated great merit."
"village head!"
"Come find me when you're done. We'll secretly try it out on a piece of land at night. It's better not to let too many people see it before we get to it."
With a crisp "click", the last piece of mortise and tenon structure fit together tightly.
The carpenter wiped his sweat, revealing two rows of big teeth on his dark face: "Miss, do you think this is okay?"
Zhao Xiaoyu circled the newly made rice-planting horse three times, stretched out his hands and shook it vigorously at each joint - it didn't move at all! It was many times stronger than the one nailed before.
"How about it?"
The servant was a little nervous. He had been trying to do the same thing over and over again, but failed time and time again. Would the young lady think he was a waste?
"Very good! Very solid."
Phew, it's good enough, as long as the master is satisfied. In the past year or so, he has been busy with the eldest lady, mostly to make toys for the young lady. For this reason, the young lady even specially cleared a room for him to use as a workshop.
"Girl, is it okay?"
"I don't think there's any problem at all."
"I'll go find the village chief and try it at night." He acts like a thief.
The paddy fields glowed silvery under the moonlight, and the croaking of frogs and the chirping of insects could be heard one after another.
Three figures appeared in the paddy field, "Xiaoyu, don't come down from the edge of the field when it gets dark. Your father and I will go down and try it." He had specially cleared this piece of land just to wait for their rice seedlings.
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